


The Tale of Winter's Daughter

by DemonQueen666



Series: Folkin' Around verse [8]
Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Future, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Gen, Irony, Loki's Kids, Multi, Norse Myths & Legends, Parents & Children, Princes & Princesses, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonQueen666/pseuds/DemonQueen666
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Princess Skadi of Asgard, sometimes called Skadi Lewis, or by many other names, but always, always known as Loki's daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Frost

_“Skaði, the daughter of the giant, donned her helmet, and mail, and all her war-gear, and betook herself to Asgard”_

 – _Skáldskaparmál_ , the Prose Edda

*

The third child born to Asgard’s royal house is a girl, the first daughter of her generation. Though her cheeks are rosy and her eyes bright and lively, her skin is bone-white pale, and her hair grows in black and shining.

 _‘Another spawn of Loki,’_ the courtiers mutter, disappointed that the king and his beautiful, if mortal, queen continue to drag their feet on producing heirs, while the king’s younger brother is well on his way to having a regular brood.

The silver-tongued prince is enough trouble all his own. He needs no army of miniature versions of himself to add to his mischievous legacy.

But the princess is clearly of her father’s issue, were there ever any doubt. She has Loki’s hair, his flashing green eyes, his fine bones in the lines of her face. Her body grows into a shape like his; tall and long-limbed, with thin but sturdy muscle underneath.

And there is something about his grin, and his laugh, in the look of her smile. Merry and sharp, like the edge of a dancing knife.

She was supposed to be born in the winter – fitting, for a pale-skinned shadow-haired child. But apparently no one told her, or if they did she failed to listen, for she came nearly a full month early, as autumn leaves were only just becoming kissed by the first brace of frost.

 _‘In a hurry,’_ her father says; ‘ _In a hurry to join her brothers. Always in a hurry.’_

It’s true enough assessment when it comes to the princess. She scoots from nursemaids’ laps as soon as she is able to wriggle, flees the confines of the nursery as soon as she is able to run. On often bare feet she tears through the palace gardens, chasing after her two brothers or a dog or cat or sometimes nothing but the wind. Her hairs dries into bouncing unruly waves and her hands are always dirty from digging in the ground, her knees always bruised from climbing trees.

She is a wild child, and people cluck their tongues and say she is exactly what they pictured would eventually resolve, from the meeting in the middle of the strong wills of both her parents.

She is obtrusive like her mother, and confident like her father. And stubborn like them both. She refuses to learn the meaning of the word _‘no’._ And whenever anybody tries to tell her _‘No you can’t’,_ her response is always _‘Oh yes I can’._

She is named Skadi, and her proper title by birth is Lokisdottir. But hardly anyone ever calls her that.

Strangers look out at the palace grounds and see this thick-maned sun-bitten boney little hellion, cheering and shouting as she fiercely swings a wooden dummy weapon, or laughing as she rolls in the grass.

“Who is _that_?” they ask. And the response is always the same.

“That is Skadi. Loki’s child.”

And so she is known by all. She is Skadi Lokischild.

*

When she is young all her memories are happy ones. Her childhood passes in a state of pure bliss.

Not surprising; Skadi is a princess and wants for nothing. Least of all the attentions of an adoring family.

Under the warmth of Asgard’s golden sun she and her brothers, and eventually a sister, pass the days playing games, racing up and down the rolling hills and meadows. When he is free their father is often there as well, and some of Skadi’s best memories have a long tall shadow standing next to hers, a strong hand she can reach for to squeeze hers whenever she wants it.

In the lazy heat of the afternoon the children grow more tired than they are willing to admit, and in a patch of thick cool grass or beneath the shade of a tree their father lies down and the little ones gather around him.

With her head pillowed on his body or tucked beneath one of his arms, Skadi closes her eyes and listens to the sound of his voice. He tells them stories, or talks about things to do with magic that only his sons understand, but listen they all do regardless.

The smell and feel of her father, the tenor of his spoken words wrap her in comfort and familiarity, and Skadi never feels safer.

All good things, however, must come to an end. And their endless days with Father having not a care but to dote on them collapse in the form of another sibling’s arrival. For a time, Loki can no longer run with them like he used to.

The princes are angry because it means he no longer can devote himself to their lessons. Who will they learn their sorcery from if not him?

“It’s not fair,” Wyclef complains, even though he should know better, being the eldest. Austen just stands there and backs him up silently with a look of hearty youthful disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” their father says softly, sighing. The small area of skin just beneath his eyelids is turning gray.

He looks down at his rounded belly and frowns, rubbing it. “Today I’m just too tired. Maybe tomorrow.”

Wyclef makes a petulant, wordless sound. He spins and tugs his brother’s sleeve, dragging his compatriot along with a muttered, “Come on, Austen”. The younger prince only spares one glance back for their father.

Skadi however stays right where she is, hands clutched absently behind her back, and bounces on her heels restlessly.

“Are we getting a baby sister?” Fandra asks in a chirping eager voice. Skadi knows _she_ only wants one because she thinks it means she can dress her up like a doll.

“No, I don’t think so.” Father runs a hand across his stomach again, this time with a smile. “Actually I’m fairly certain this one is a boy.”

Fandra’s nose screws up in disappointment. “Yuck!” she declares, and then she too flounces off in search of less unsatisfactory fare. Skadi and her father are left alone.

Skadi comes closer after a moment, gaze fixated on her father’s swollen belly. Her parents take turns, so it was her mother that was pregnant with Fandra.

“Here,” Father gently takes her hand in his, and guides it to his side, “would you like to feel? He might move for you.”

Move her unborn baby brother does, if only just a little. Skadi hangs there silently, nose practically pressed into her father’s stomach beside both her hands in all her curiosity.

“You grew the same way,” he reminds her quietly. With an affectionate hand he briefly touches her cheek. “In the same place.” Skadi nods, knowing.

It will be years before she’s old enough to realize this is strange. That she is an anomaly because she was sired by her mother and birthed by her father.

But there is much about Skadi’s life, about all her brothers and sister’s lives, that none of them think to question. They are oblivious to the idea that their world is anything but normal, growing up with nothing to compare to; surrounded by each other and protective family, uncaring as to the opinions of outsiders.

In the easygoing way of children Skadi believes that things are the way they are because they are just so. They don’t warrant any kind of comment.

Of c _ourse_ Wyclef has magic, and Austen does too. After all so does Father. Isn’t that the way it works?

Much of her early days when she’s old enough to slip out of adults’ sight is spent following behind her brothers. They pull their pranks and have their little things they call ‘adventures’, and for the most part they do not mind that Skadi is there. After all she’s _nearly_ as good as another boy: she’s as strong as they are, and before long she might be able to out-wrestle both of them. Both her brothers are thinkers, and so not as inclined to feats of strength.

It is a cold day when the three of them are playing outside, and the world is thick with the gray and white of snow. They cross the courtyard nearly huddled together, one minute jeering and laughing, and occasionally pelting each other with slush.

The next minute however Austen, who has been carefully watching his sister’s face, stops, his eyes going wide.

“Skadi, what are you _doing?_ ” he asks her accusingly. “How are you pulling that trick?”

She makes a face at him, equal parts confusion and exasperation. People call her and Austen “twins” and though they aren’t really – they’re not quite five months apart – they have that sort of relationship.

“What are you talking about?” she demands.

Wyclef has stopped walking and gazes steely-eyed at them both.

Austen points. “That! Do that again,” he commands. “Breathe out.”

Still mystified, Skadi nonetheless dutifully does so, her breath released in a slow puff of air. At last she sees what her brother means.

Where he and their older brother create a small cloud of steam with every exhale, Skadi’s is perfectly invisible. She’s never noticed this before.

“You’re hiding your breath,” Wyclef notes, sounding a bit jealous. “How are you doing that? When did you learn it?”

“And here I thought you couldn’t even do magic,” Austen adds.

“I can’t. At least, I always thought so. I can’t do anything else,” Skadi protests. “I don’t even know what I’m doing _now_.”

Her brothers look at her inquisitively, thoughtful. Austen raises a hand near in front of her mouth and shivers when next she breathes out.

“It’s not even warm,” he remarks.

Wyclef has a hand on his chin, stroking it as he studies her. He takes in the lighter cloak she has on compared to them, her lack of gloves or anything on her head.

“You aren’t even cold right now,” he gathers at length, slow, “are you?”

Skadi shakes her head. Flakes of freshly falling snow cling to her hair and flick down against her cheeks and neck, not bothering her in the least. “No.”

They have always been a little bit cooler, to the touch, than their mother or just about anyone else. In their unthinking way it was assumed they got it from Father, who often has colder skin himself.

But Skadi is the coldest of them all.

In the end the three mutually shrug it off and decide it must just be another of the many pieces of the abilities present in their family. Perhaps it is some inherent magical skill Skadi has that she doesn’t know how to use properly.

By the end of the day her brothers have all but forgotten it. Skadi herself means to ask, but first there is mischief and then there is chastisement, and at dinner their uncle the king regales them with the exciting story of his latest grand adventure, and after dinner Mom sneaks them extra cookies and hot chocolate with a loving, conspiratorial smile.

Before long Skadi is being bundled into her nightgown and then off to bed, her hair brushed and her face washed, yawning. She doesn’t think to ask any questions, and she never bothers to wonder about it again.

After all, it can’t hardly be anything important.

*

The most sour-faced, most boldly slanderous of the subjects on Asgard comment that Loki cannot, it seems, ever do _anything_ right, ever do anything _properly_.

Yes, he married – enough of a shock in itself, really. To a mortal woman, true, but so was his brother’s wife, and so little fault could be found in that. He went further in his duty by producing heirs, though the way he went about it was all irregular. Carrying more than half of them himself, and having so unseemly many, and having not the courtesy to wait for his elder brother to have so much as a son first.

And as for Loki’s sons – they are not proper princes worthy of the legacy of Asgard. They are like their father; students of magic, relying on cunning and sly trickery over strength. They aren’t warriors.

The eldest abandoned even the _pretense_ of trying to learn. Years ago he eschewed lessons in combat completely in favor of fully devoting his time to becoming a master sorcerer. The second still attends such lessons dutifully, but he’s of a mild disposition bordering almost on timidity. A fighter he may yet be, but he will never be a bold soldier, and certainly no general.

And then along comes Loki’s daughter. A princess. And she, it soon becomes apparent, is not to perform to the duty that’s expected of her either.

From an early age she snatches up knives and sticks, and eagerly throws herself into doing what her brothers do not.

Girls are still a rare sight on the training grounds, but with the Lady Sif as lead instructor none who seek a place there are turned away. Skadi is young, but determined, and she grows much faster than the full-blooded Asgardian students. Quickly she moves her way up the ranks, from being someone who is merely learning how to fight to someone who excels at it.

She is swift, sure of foot and hard to catch. And when she lands a blow she strikes true and hard. Her favored weapon is the spear-staff compound, not unlike her grandfather’s Gungnir.

And when she fights, her eyes turn bright and alive, a fierce laugh sometimes bubbling up from her throat.

The judging, curious eyes watch Skadi Lokischild as she barrels and beats her opponents bodily into the ground, black curls waving freely and white teeth shining, and clearly enjoying every minute of it.

With begrudging and some grumbling, they are forced to concede. Like the rest of her family Skadi may not be what is proper, but at least, at long last, here is someone to live up to being worthy of the royal legacy.

She will be – she _is_ – a warrior of Asgard.

But for now, she is still young. And so no, not a real warrior yet. Much to her regular, almost daily frustration.

In Skadi’s fourteenth year there is a tournament held, a series of open matches in single combat, performed for the amusement of the nobles and honor in the eyes of their king. There is a small purse to be won, but like most such things on Asgard it’s done really for the glory.

And Skadi is not allowed to compete.

 _“Next time, hon,”_ her mother promises, brushing her hair and giving a quick kiss. But Skadi is still far too young, it’s explained; she hasn’t learned enough to be on level footing with the recruits that will be coming from all over Asgard.

But though she’s still young and small Skadi thinks she has learned more about fighting than anyone gives her credit for. She thinks her parents are too overprotective, scared that she’ll get hurt.

Anyone who loves fighting near as much as Skadi knows no fear of pain. And has plenty of brashness in spirit, besides.

So she sneaks off and finds a way to enter herself anyway – under a false name.

The day of the tournament she shows up wearing a dark gray fighting uniform that covers her from neck to bootstraps. Her hair is worked into a tight plait. Her face – and this, she thinks, is cleverest for her of all – is hidden behind a battle mask. It covers everything, not revealing a feature.

The other contestants eye her oddly, but there’s nothing in the rules prohibiting it. Skadi has not really been hit by the changes of her age yet: her body is thin, more straight than curved, and if she pitches her voice low and husky she sounds, if not entirely like a boy, indeterminate enough she could be imagined as either male or female.

She’s allowed two weapons. Skadi picks a fighting staff and a short blade, and lines up with the others. Soon the first round begins.

If her father or any of her immediate family were present in the audience, her charade would surely be over before it began. But Loki is bored by watching others fight, and his sons are likewise, and his wife would not come without him. And because the contestants are young it is no grand spectacle to which the entire royal family is obligated to attend. They speak King Thor’s name in hail at the opening, and he’s not even here.

But _his_ father is.

Sitting in the central seat among the judges is Odin the All-Father, his hands neatly folded before his lap, his expression schooled in calm solemnity. Still one of the most revered men in the Nine Realms despite having passed on the crown to his eldest.

And when Skadi enters the ring for her first match, she feels a prickle of nerves as Odin’s gaze passes across her. Will he recognize his granddaughter? Surely he’s one of the few gifted enough to peer beneath her disguise. And the mask itself is usually hung as decoration in Loki’s private quarters. Odin may know it.

But Odin says nothing. Though, as Skadi stands at the end of the match triumphant, his one eye sparkles, and briefly he seems to smile.

Now that he’s retired from kingship the All-Father’s favorite pastime is to be a doting and indulgent grandfather. But as much as he loves all his grandchildren, it’s whispered that there’s one he especially treasures.

And it’s not the oldest grandson, nor the youngest. And it’s not the polite, intelligent middle son, nor the pretty and charming second daughter, either.

Though Skadi needs no favoritism to get her way through the next few rounds. She earns it, by winning and soundly defeating her opponents. She is pleased with herself, and proud, her excitement growing with each passing second. Won’t the look on her parents’ faces be grand, when they see that she’s won the tournament?

The sun is high in the sky as they crawl on into the late hours of afternoon. The fifth round begins, and by now things are getting different. The weaker fighters have been fully weeded out now and Skadi is definitely the smallest combatant left. Her parents weren’t entirely wrong, after all – she’s much younger than most who would compete in a tourney.

The draw pits her against a hulking youth three times her size in heavy shoulder-pads. As the two of them step down to face each other Skadi finally feels uncertainty and apprehension dawning.

The match is scarcely begun before Skadi realizes she’s in trouble. She’s skilled, yes, and fast, and with a zeal for battle. But this boy has had much more training than her, and his strength is too great for her to make up against.

She knows long before it’s over she’s already lost. The least she can do is go down fighting and make it a good battle.

She gets in a few commendable shots. An attempt to trip up her opponent goes awry however and the boy regains his ground. Before long Skadi is trapped solely on the defense, dodging one blow after another.

With a lucky strike he twists her staff from her hands, splintering it in two. Bringing his heavy axe overhead he bears down on her, too fast for her to draw her blade.

Stepping backward quickly Skadi’s hands are up in front of her, shielding. Her mind races. In the space between heartbeats she decides to defend herself with ice – from both palms emerge a solid blast of silver crystal, encasing the axe and attempting to freeze it in place.

Skadi practices on and off with her strange power. Though she was never really sure where her affinity for cold came from, she had the feeling it might come in handy.

She will be thrown out of the tournament, of course. Using magic is against the rules. But she was about to be disqualified anyway, by defeat, and at least this way she comes off uninjured. Her family will be furious enough at her for the disobedience and deception without her having gotten herself hurt in the process.

With a crackling sound the ice coats itself over the blade, handle, and gloved hands of the now-bewildered young man wielding it. Some of the momentum still carries and Skadi is knocked flat on her back, winded. But other than that the weapon is now harmless.

The stands are dead silent. Lying on the ground, Skadi props herself up by her elbows, beneath her mask grinning.

And then the cry starts.

 _“Jotun!”_ voices roar from the audience, louder and louder, frenzied and deafening. _“Frost Giant! Monster!”_

These words stand out among a hundred other senseless yells, a flurry of movement as the spectators are suddenly full of mass anger and panic.

The other fighter drops his axe with a yelp and backs away as hurriedly as he can.

Skadi stares at it all, astonished. What is everyone yelling about? What is happening?

The All-Father leaps to his feet, one arm outstretched, his face twisted and eye wide with alarm. “Wait!” he shouts.

But it’s too late. The crowd is already rushing the field.

They bear down on the lone figure left in the ring before she can think to run or defend herself. Violently she is hauled to her feet, her mask torn off, and then Skadi is discovered.

*

Luckily the shock over finding what face lurks beneath the mask calms the crowd to stop them from tearing her to pieces. The All-Father is able to restore enough order to have her handed over to the guards, who take her not to a dungeon cell but a small and empty room in the palace where she’s locked in.

She’s given the impression that this is done as much if not more so for her own protection.

But protection from _what?_ What is the reasoning behind this chaos that has suddenly gripped everyone? She doesn’t at all understand what’s going on.

She knows, vaguely, mostly from her lessons on history, that once the Asgardians and the Frost Giants were hated enemies. That once there was a war.

But that was _so_ long ago – hardly ever anyone even talks about the Frost Giants anymore. Skadi has never seen one; she doesn’t think anyone left on Asgard has, not for a very long time. She remembers once that Uncle Volstagg said they had fought a few, in that little-spoken-of time before Skadi and her siblings were born, and he was all prepared to tell them the tale – but Uncle Thor had suddenly turned grim and awkward, and made him stop.

Skadi asked her parents about it, later, and her mother had given her father such a pointed look. But Father turned away, and his response was snappish, and he quickly changed the subject.

Skadi remembers because later that evening her parents quarreled. She knows they did, even though it wasn’t in front of her, because that night they slept in separate bedchambers, something they almost never do.

But then, though she hates to hear it, and argues when she does, Skadi is a child. She doesn’t know that she has been sheltered.

Mom puts them to bed reading out of books she brings from Midgard, of ‘fairy tales’, and full of spirited young heroines. Their aunts and uncles tell hearty battle stories and funny jokes of past exploits. And Father weaves such wondrous tales, of magic and secrets from all across the universe.

They don’t know that when he was their age, their father and his brother, and every child of their generation, was told stories of the dreaded and evil and ugly Frost Giants.

Finally after many hours Skadi is let out of the room she was locked up in and taken to another, larger chamber. There her near entire family is waiting – her father, her mother, Uncle Thor and Aunt Jane, Grandmother and Grandfather. Even her older brothers are there.

Wyclef and Austen look as confused as Skadi feels. Everyone else though looks worried, and ashen.

“Oh, god, Skadi…” Mom rushes to her, and holds her tight, and then begins obviously looking her over for signs of injury. “Are you okay?”

“ _I’m_ fine, Mom, but-” Skadi pushes at her, breaking her grasp. “What’s going on? Why is everyone so…?”

She trails off at the looks the adults exchange. And then the king comes forward.

“Is it true?” Uncle Thor asks, somber. “Is it true what they’re saying happened in the ring?”

“I saw it myself,” Grandfather replies softly. “Skadi summoned winter’s touch to her, made ice form from nothing in her hand.”

Grandmother presses a hand over her mouth. Aunt Jane hugs herself at the middle and frowns tight. And Father…Father looks like he’s going to be sick.

Skadi can feel her cheeks grow hot from embarrassment and shame, even though she isn’t at all sure what she did wrong.

“I-I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I know I shouldn’t have used magic in the ring, and I didn’t _want_ to, but I didn’t have a choice. And I’m sorry that I never told you I could, but I-”

“Wait.” Father holds up a hand, looking ever more shocked and stricken. “You have _always_ been able to do this? It’s nothing new?”

Skadi gazes at him naively. “Yes?”

“We’ve seen her do it before,” Austen chimes in. “Skadi is immune to cold, and can freeze things with her fingertips, and sometimes even her breath.”

“It’s been like that ever since she was small,” Wyclef confirms.

Father is thunderstruck as he stares at him both. “You have all three known about this, for years now, and it occurred to none of you to say something?” His voice rises as he makes his demand. The brothers shrink back, slightly, and then exchange a furtive look of frowns.

“We never knew it was important.”

“I still don’t know why it is,” Skadi interjects. “Why is everybody talking about this? Why does it even matter?”

She expects Father to answer. She is surprised when he falls silent, his lips pressed tightly together.

“It matters because…” Grandmother steals a look at her second child, taking a step forward. “Because the ability to control ice in such a way, and so innately, is known to be native to only one species. What you can do, Skadi – in the eyes of the people of Asgard, it’s very…significant.”

She waits for further explanation but none seems to be coming. Skadi’s brow furrows as she looks around at one person to the next.

“I don’t understand,” she insists, with a rising wariness. “What’s going on?”

“One of you, _tell_ her,” Aunt Jane snaps, breaking the silence the elder members of their family seem to be locked into. Her head turns, expression close to anger. “Someone needs to tell her, right now!”

“Tell me _what?_ ”

Mom gulps, eyes blinking heavily, and reaches for her daughter again. “Skadi-” But to her surprise she’s cut off.

“What this means, daughter, is that your heritage is even more mixed than you already knew.” Father moves in as he speaks intently, his hands going to rest on Skadi’s shoulders. He bends down, slightly, so that he is closer to meeting her eye.

“There is a secret that this family has been hiding for more than a generation.”

His voice is quiet, earnest, each note ringing heavy with emotion. There can be no doubt he speaks what is solemn truth.

“That secret is that…I was not born of Asgard. I am a Jotun. I have giant’s blood,” he reveals. “And that means, daughter, that so do you.”

Skadi stares at him for a moment, overcome, and then she pulls free of his grasp.

“What? No!” she exclaims. “How can this be? You raised me to know myself to be a daughter of Asgard! To be proud of what I was!”

But can she be proud of her lineage if it’s a false one? How can she stand with her head held high, and know herself a warrior, if not a drop of real blood from her homeland runs through her veins?

How can she even be sure who she is anymore? Or what?

Skadi looks down at her own hands as if trying to identify some flaw in them, some telltale giveaway in their color or shape.

“Skadi,” her father breathes, all sympathy, as he puts a hand out for her again.

But she turns from his reach, and whirls on him, her face alighting with fury.

“Don’t! Don’t touch me,” she orders him. Pulling back further she stares into his face as her eyes narrow, her head starting to shake. “How _dare_ you. You…you _lied_ to me,” she seethes, the realization of so much betrayal making her voice come heated and thick.

And Loki goes completely still where he is, one hand part way outstretched. The color drains from his skin as his face fills slowly with something indescribable.

Something that seems very much akin to horror.

But Skadi barely realizes, and doesn’t care, as she continues her tirade.

“All this time, how could you do it? How could you mislead me so? How could you _do_ this to me? I _hate_ you,” she finishes in a scream.

“Skadi,” her father manages, “Skadi, no-”

But the words come again, louder, unrelenting:

_“I hate you!”_

Her father stumbles backward, numbly, expression broken. His legs seem to give way under him weakly. Both his brother and wife catch onto him so he doesn’t fall to the floor.

But Skadi has already turned her back on him. She runs, out the door, heedless to any arms or beseeching voices that try to stop her. She runs fast as her feet can carry her and keeps running.

Running to get as far away from her father as she possibly can.


	2. Thawing

_"From my dwellings and fields shall ever come forth_

_A counsel cold for thee."_

– Skadi to Loki; _Lokasenna_ , the Poetic Edda

 *

The word of the secret that has been hidden for so long does not remain within the royal family. Nor does it stop among their closest counsel, most trusted advisors and lifelong friends.

No; once uttered, it spreads like wildfire. And before long the whole palace, and then the whole city, and then it seems the entire _kingdom_ is whispering and murmuring and gasping over the truth.

And in its wake comes a mass outrage.

For the longest time it’s been tolerated that the current king has no heirs. Tolerated in an absentminded way, as a situation that’s been assumed will inevitably solve itself. Thor might die, yes – he spends an _unseemly_ amount of time off fighting to defend Midgard – but no one really believes that. There has been fretting and complaining, from those that like to fret and complain, but for the most part it’s not a pressing concern that he’s yet to father a son.

Suddenly everyone is aware that his younger brother is adopted, and a Frost Giant. And now his lack of a son, of any children at all, is a _very_ pressing concern.

Loki is no longer in the line of succession – but his sons are. If Thor were to drop dead that very moment, the throne must fall to one of them. The next king Asgard bowed to would be of Jotun lineage.

Suddenly, the Mighty Thor does not somehow look so indestructible. And he and his queen having put off starting a family of their own does not seem so harmless.

The advisors are outraged, and some of the oldest noble families are upset to the point of being hysterical.

And meanwhile, in the family most involved with the secret that’s been revealed?

Well, they have a few things to deal with.

The youngest boy, Erik, has it easiest. He’s still at the age where if his parents can pretend not to be worried in front of him, if he doesn’t see or hear anything, then he believes when they tell him nothing’s wrong. He’s too young to understand politics. He plays happily with his toys on the floor of his bedroom, unbothered and unaware.

But the next child, Fandra, is four years older. And the things she doesn’t understand aren’t enough. Her tears have been flowing nonstop in distress as she wails; crying out that she’s supposed to be a princess, not a monster.

Both Wyclef and Austen have taken to hiding. Burying their noses in books, ignoring everyone, and going out of the way not to say anything. If they’re upset, or how much, they refuse to show.

And Skadi herself has retreated to her bedchamber. Locked the door, refusing to see anyone.

She sits on the edge of her bed, thinking most of all of how angry she is. There are a lot of things that went wrong the other day, but she feels none of them would have happened if it weren’t for her father.

Her father, who all her life told her never to doubt, never to question, never to be afraid of being herself. To trust in the family that loved her, and that it didn’t matter how different they were from everyone around them, so long as they had each other.

Who told her it didn’t matter what anyone else ever thought, she had _nothing_ to be ashamed of.

Her father, who raised her to be proud – while all along he was hiding the truth, furtively trying to conceal what he really was. Entreating her to embrace her differences with one breath and burying his identity in humiliation with the other.

She’d once felt a kind of smugness in that her father, who was called the God of Lies, the Prince of Falsehoods, would gladly mislead the entire world but to her he was nothing but honest.

Now she sees what a fool she was, for he had been telling her the ugliest lies of all. Everything that he has ever said to her was false.

Truly, he _is_ a monster. And she hates him for it, with all her heart.

*

It takes time and some doing but at last Skadi’s mother gets her to open the door and let her in.

She sits next to her daughter on the bed by the foot of it, while Skadi draws every muscle tight, crosses her arms and will not look at her.

Mom sighs, weary. “Honey, come on. At least say something.” Skadi defies her by remaining stonily silent. “Or what’s the matter – are you angry at me too?”

She turns to fix her with a heated glare, slow. “Did you know?” she demands.

Mom says nothing. But she doesn’t have to, for of course she did. It’s written all over her face. Not guiltily, just…very, very regretful.

Skadi’s eyes grow narrower. “Why didn’t you tell me? Not ever?”

“Your father didn’t want us to.” She fingers the creases in Skadi’s bedcovers absently, smoothing them. “We talked about it, way back when Wyclef was first born…after a while, we decided-”

“ _You_ decided?” Skadi repeats, cutting her off scathingly. “ _Who_ decided? You both did, or just he? Whose decision was it?” By fourteen she’s noticed what most children eventually do, that sometimes parents only pretend to agree in order to present a unified front. She verbally prods her mother: “Did you think it was a good idea too, not to tell us anything?”

For a beat Mom is silent. “Do you really want to know the truth?”

Skadi’s eyes widen. “Yes, I do. The truth would be nice for a change,” she retorts scathingly.

Mom rolls her eyes and makes a sour face, as if she thinks her daughter is playing it a little too hard. But she nods once as her mouth puckers, briefly, in a thoughtful frown. “I didn’t think we shouldn’t tell you about it. I figured…something exactly like this was bound to happen. That no matter what we did, you kids were probably gonna find out one day, and that not knowing from the beginning would just make it worse.”

She sighs again, a different note this time, and gazes at her child beseechingly.

“But your father was insistent. He thought _I_ couldn’t understand what it was like, to have to have that kind of a secret. That he knew better.” Her shrug is morose. “So, even though I had my doubts, he convinced me to go along with his way.”

“His way was wrong,” Skadi declares decisively. “Everything about him is wrong. I hate him, and I never want to speak to him ever again.”

“Wow. You must be the first teenage girl to say that about one of her parents, ever.”

She grabs one of her pillows, hurls it pointlessly to the floor, and then whirls around on her bed, lying down so that she doesn’t have to see her mother.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Scooting closer Mom rubs a placating hand against her shoulder. Skadi doesn’t pull away, though her face remains fixed in a look of foulest rage. “Right now, this is a little more than your typical teenage angst,” she admits, forlornly. “Things are getting kind of serious around here.”

Hot tears well up beneath Skadi’s eyelashes. She isn’t sure if she’s more angry or scared or simply _upset_.

She doesn’t know how bad things really are. What if this causes the people to turn against her family, against their king and queen? Do they _really_ hate the Frost Giants _that_ much? What if there’s a coup? Asgard is the only home she’s ever known. She can’t imagine what it’d be like, living anywhere else.

She can’t imagine living in a world where she’s anything but Asgardian.

Skadi sits up and looks at her mother, her eyes sad and frantic. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I didn’t know, I – all I wanted was to win the tournament,” she says tearfully.

“Oh, Skadi, I know.” Mom hugs her. “I promise, nobody _blames_ you. This isn’t your fault.”

The anxious guilt Skadi is feeling pushes back at those words forcefully – “No,” she reminds herself out loud, voice terse; “it’s _Father’s_ fault. All of it.”

“That isn’t true either,” Mom protests, but Skadi isn’t listening. None of it, _none_ of this would be happening if it wasn’t for Father. She wouldn’t have to feel this way if only he hadn’t lied.

She knows it. With absolute cold, hardened certainty.

Mom watches the expression on her face and pulls her lower lip between her teeth, reaching to gently touch Skadi on the chin.

“I don’t think it’s my place to explain to you what he was thinking. But someday, I think, you’ll understand what he did a little better. But until then…he’s feeling pretty hurt.”

“ _Good,_ ” Skadi bites out. “He should be! I don’t care how sorry he is. I’ll never forgive him. Not ever.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to even _look_ at him. And if being in the palace means being around him, then I’m not leaving this room.”

For a long quiet moment they sit there, her stubborn and tense and unhappy, her mother giving her a careful and considering look.

Finally Mom says, gently, “Maybe you _should_ leave. Only for a little while. Would you like that? To get away from all this?” She touches Skadi’s hair. “You could go stay with Gram-gram.”

She thinks about her mother’s suggestion.

And though there’s some apprehension, right now it sounds like a wonderful idea. There’s a cloud hanging over her head on Asgard. Sometimes her chest feels so tight, like she can’t breathe.

“Yes,” she agrees, quiet but firm. “I want to go.”

Mom helps her pack, makes quick arrangements, and then they’re on the Bifrost before Skadi even has a chance to think she might want to change her mind.

*

Skadi’s maternal grandmother lives by herself in the Midwestern United States. She has a small but well-maintained ranch home in a quiet, suburban little town. A retired nurse, her main profession now is serving as a stopover for her many assorted grandchildren.

Gram-gram is sometimes described by Mom as “painfully normal”. A tiny, petite woman, she has small eyes and a somewhat bird-like set to her face. She wears her silver-streaked hair up in a messy bun and is usually wrapped up in loose sweaters and faded jeans.

She’s quiet and smells faintly like chamomile tea, but Skadi likes her. In the summer sometimes she and her siblings will go to stay with her for a while.

Instead of armor or dresses they wear printed t-shirts and shorts and sneakers. Their cousins teach them to play jump-rope and draw on the sidewalks with thick colored chalk, and sometimes Gram-gram gives each of them money and sends them on a walk down the street to the dollar store.

It’s very, very…different. Detached from the trappings and entertainments of royalty, magic, and power, the stays always feel like a pleasant hazy dream.

She’s looking forward to an extended visit with Gram-gram. At first. But the moment they arrive and start to settle in, she looks around and feels a sudden creeping sensation like claustrophobia.

This wouldn’t be like a holiday. She’s never been on Midgard for more than a few days, maybe a week at a time. She doesn’t really know what she would do.

Without fighting lessons, or her favorite weaponry, or meals in the banquet hall, or servants, she doesn’t at all _feel_ like Skadi of Asgard.

She doesn’t know who she is in the absence.

But she won’t be staying long anyway, as it turns out. Gram-gram frowns as she serves them cookies and juice, a thoughtful line of worry creasing her forehead.

“Skadi can stay here, of course. I’m more than happy to have her,” she says to her daughter. “But – it’s _August_ , dear. In a few weeks won’t she have to be in school?”

“Rats. I completely forgot,” Mom exclaims. “They do year-round tutoring on Asgard.” She shakes her head. “I could try to keep her out of it, but that’s more trouble than it’s worth. And it’d probably be a bad idea to send her to the local high school. I’ll have to find someplace else.”

Skadi looks up from the lopsided homemade sugar cookie she was poking at. “Someplace…else?”

Mom smiles and gives her a pat on the knee. “Someplace where you’ll fit in, honey,” she promises. “I’m sure it’s out there.”

And so two weeks later Skadi and her things are packed up again and sent off to the Cranewood Academy.

Cranewood Academy is a private institute located far up into the range of the Appalachian Mountains. The campus boasts many buildings of brick and glass with tall towers and long halls, and sprawling grounds of lush green grass and carefully manicured shrubbery. The terrain directly around however is incredibly rocky, with no road leading directly through, making reaching it impossible by any way other than helicopter (or, as it turns out, Bifrost). This is very much on purpose.

The school may be an elite, private institute boasting high class accommodations and academic excellence, but it exists so that the incredibly wealthy and influential will have a place to send their children. A hidden place, very understanding of a need for privacy and protection.

After a meeting with the headmaster and saying goodbye to Mom, Skadi suddenly finds herself alone – and burdened with a uniform of dark gray with teal accents, a dorm assignment, a class schedule, and two trunks that contain what can now be considered the entire sum of her belongings.

No weapons, no armor. Nobody she has ever known. Just her, and the strange new place where she is supposed to be able to “fit in”.

An aide escorts her to something called her “homeroom”, where she finds herself standing in front of the room with everybody staring at her while she fights the urge to tug at her pleated skirt.

“Class,” the teacher says in a polished voice, a bright and practiced smile across her face, “I’d like to introduce you to a new student that will be joining us for the rest of the term. This is Skadi Lewis.”

At times in order to not attract unwanted attention, when Mom travels she often goes by her mortal last name. Skadi had stiffly pleaded with her this time to let her use that surname instead, for she refused to go by any other, and though she had given her a strange look her mother didn’t argue.

“Skadi,” the teacher continues, still in that syrupy oh-so-pleasant tone, “is from Asgard.”

Several students who were staring at their desks with jaded looks glance up with notably more interest at that.

Skadi walks to her desk, keeps her head down, and pointedly discourages people from talking to her.

A strange tone somewhere rings to indicate when the “homeroom” period is over. After that Skadi is allowed to go back to what is to be her bedroom to unpack her things.

She is very surprised and more than a little annoyed to find out she will be sharing the chamber. When she walks in she finds the space boasts two extra beds and two dressers, and there is a pair of girls nearly the same age as her sitting sideways across one of the beds, looking at a magazine and chatting.

The look up at Skadi with a kind of curious superiority that reminds her of nothing so much as a pair of housecats.

“ _You_ must be the new girl,” one of them says without introduction. “I saw they added your name to the roster.”

“Um,” Skadi says, “yes.”

These girls have sleek hair and fingernails painted in intricate patterns. They already remind her of all the noblemen’s daughters she hates, who care about nothing but looking _pretty_ and finding a husband.

The other girl, who is blonde and has lips that shine pearly pink, tosses her head. “My name is Cynthia Mumford,” she says with a kind of snide authority. “And yes, I am of _the_ Mumfords.”

“That’s an important family in Westport, Connecticut,” the first girl informs Skadi in a way that seems backhandedly helpful. “Everyone who’s everyone wants to know then.”

“And this,” Cynthia continues, indicating her compatriot, “is Patience Jhai. Her father owns one of the largest buildings in Seoul.”

Patience smiles thinly in acknowledgement. Her hair is perfectly black and her eyes are dark and tilt slightly upwards in her face.

“That’s nice,” Skadi says, feeling more cowed than she would normally let herself be. She’s had an overwhelming morning. “My name is Skadi. Skadi Lewis.”

Her tongue wavers slightly on the unfamiliar name. But it would make her throat fairly burn in anger right now to identify herself as belonging to the house of Loki.

“ _I_ heard, from Vanessa Hargreaves, who has homeroom with you,” Cynthia chirps questioningly, “that they said that you were from _Asgard_. Is that true?”

Skadi swallows. For the first time in her life she does not feel proud to call herself Asgardian. But to admit so will inevitably lead back to her father – her father, who she wants nothing to do with.

“Yes,” she breathes.

The girls exchange a look before eyeing her with interest. “So, are you like, a princess?” Patience demands keenly.

“Well, yes,” she says slowly, blinking a bit. She wasn’t expecting this. “I think that also means I’m a space alien,” she remembers out loud, recalling something her mother told her.

But Patience and Cynthia are completely disinterested in this detail. “A real princess,” Patience states. “And, your uncle is Thor? From the Avengers?”

“Of course.”

Cynthia is smiling in a calculating way. “I think you and we are going to be the best of friends,” she declares. “Don’t worry; we’ll help you with _everything_ you need to know.”

Despite Skadi’s initial disinclination to put any weight of trust into this statement, that turns out to, actually, be somewhat true.

There is a lot about how schooling in the mortal fashion works that she doesn’t understand. The lesson structure, certain behaviors that are expected of her, the way the different groups navigate around each other socially and form cliques.

It flummoxes her, especially the socializing. But Cynthia and Patience are experts at all of it.

They are still notably shallow, somewhat callous girls. And however fond of her they may be, it’s clear they put most weight in being able to name a legitimate princess among their circle of friends. Skadi quickly learns which pieces of their advice to follow and which to take with a grain of salt. Overall however their ‘friendship’ comes in quite handy.

All her life she has wrapped her family, her home around her and ignored the rest. Never bothered with making friends. Never bothered with trying to change anything about herself.

But there is nothing familiar to base herself on here – and what remains she casts aside. She thinks of her father and his deceitful words and pretends that none of it exists.

She is not Skadi Lokischild. She is not a warrior princess of Asgard who has her father’s green eyes. She is Skadi Lewis, and there is nothing particularly significant about her. She begins anew.

She fades into the background of Cranewood, in with the oak walls and thick carpeting, and everything becomes a numbing, comfortable sort of gray. She floats along and becomes a sort of half-ghost of herself.

In the first week she learns what “homework” is, and that one has to _study_ for tests, after she fails one given in Algebra.

In the second week she has her first gym class where they play a game called volleyball. After a particularly vicious showing from Skadi at her turn to serve, she’s sent to the headmaster’s office, where she is given a very stern scolding and then offered a place on their girl’s lacrosse team.

By the third week she learns that half the girls are jealous of her hair, and that she’s glad to have Patience and Cynthia to sit with, because it would be very bad for her if she had to eat lunch alone.

And so the weeks pass. Fall fades into winter. Skadi is used to going to lessons daily and wearing her uniform, taking familiar routes through the corridors and across the grounds as she carries books in her arms, chatting mindlessly with her classmates.

She has conversations about fashion and make-up and movies and music that she only half understands. She frets about exams and essays and grade point averages, but without genuine anxiety.

Nothing feels particularly real though nothing is entirely _unreal_ , either. It just _is_.

There’s a strange comfort in that.

She keeps her hair back with a pastel headband and wears tinted chapstick, but no nail polish. She’s still very bad at Algebra. The lacrosse team is going to regionals.

And Skadi is asked by Prentice Holt to the Winter Dance, and Tucker Danielson invites her to his dorm once to watch a movie, and Avi Shulman likes to carry her books for her between classes.

Skadi has never understood what the fuss was. On Asgard it seemed like everyone her age was talking about it, and her parents worried about it, and everyone was watching her, waiting to see what she would do – but she never had any interest. Whatever it was she was supposed to be ‘blooming’ into, it must’ve skipped over her.

But at Cranewood, maybe it’s there are no distractions, or maybe the time has finally arrived. Things are changing.

She finally notices things. She finally has the sensations she can’t put into words. Warm tingles making her gnaw her lip and curl fingers into her palms, nerve-wracking and heady and confusing but _good_. Like when she dances with Prentice and he holds her close, feeling her heart flutter, brushing against the stubble on his cheek. Like when she sits next to Tucker and their legs bump, smelling his hair gel in the dark, the jolt that comes when he reaches for her hand. Like how she enjoys watching the way Avi’s smile curls up, soft and shy, and the way his biceps look underneath the fabric of his white shirtsleeves.

Like when the girls have a party in their dorm and steal a bottle of wine from the teacher’s supply closet, and it’s well past midnight and they play spin the bottle, giggling, Cynthia landing on Skadi and the way her lipstick tastes as they kiss one another, the moonlight glancing off Cynthia’s pink lacy bra.

Girls smell sweet and boys smell musky. Girls are whispers and tickles, boys are growls and bear-hugs. Girls are soft and boys are wiry. And they all have different tastes.

Skadi is fourteen and she isn’t making any real choices yet. She’s just looking at, and blushing over, and a little curious about everything.

She’s sitting in class pretending not to notice that Jeremy Alvarez is writing a note asking her if she likes him; pretending not to notice he’s passing it over, pretending she’s paying attention to a lecture on 18th century European History as the note is eight desks away, now seven, six, five, four – when an aide interrupts and sticks her head in, saying that Skadi has been summoned to the headmaster’s office.

Skadi gathers her things, puzzled more than nervous, while around her murmurs from the class are stifled as the teacher glowers at them, and underneath their desks everyone is stealthily texting.

She’s escorted to the office and she walks in, and the first thing she sees is the headmaster turning in his chair to tell her, a disconcerted look on his face, “You’re not in any trouble, Miss Lewis. But, you have a visitor.”

The second thing she sees is her father sitting there.

Skadi stands where she is and feels cold, the ground falling away from her feet in her jolt of surprise.

Father is wearing a mortal suit, black with a green scarf around his neck and gold cufflinks. His fingers are laced tightly in his lap, and they squeeze together slightly as he gazes at Skadi and she stares back at him.

It’s been so long, she realizes all at once, since she’s seen him. Months since she’s seen anyone from Asgard, and she was avoiding him days before that. Mom snuck a family photo album into her bag and the whole time Skadi has refused to look at it.

She was not thinking about him until it became so natural to do so, she practically forgot. Having him suddenly in front of her is somehow bewildering.

It isn’t as if she actually forgot he existed…and yet. There is something strange and disorienting about the sight of his face.

Father clears his throat, faint, and addresses her softly. “Hello, Skadi.”

“Father.” Her voice comes out of her like someone else is tugging it along. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”

“Your Aunt Jane is pregnant.” He meets her eyes, carefully. His words are slowly formed, as if he’s frightened of spooking her. As if he thinks if he approaches her all at once she’ll turn and run away. “The ascension crisis is over. Even if she has a daughter, she and Thor have proved they’re capable of having their own children. No one need be afraid what it means for our family anymore.”

There’s a pause before he concludes, still gentle but unerringly decisive, “It’s time for you to come home.”

“Oh,” Skadi says. She doesn’t protest.

She packs her things and she says her goodbyes before the day is over. She gives no resistance as she walks with her father to the Bifrost.

But though at all times he is right by her side, close enough to brush his arm and she knows she feels him watching her, she doesn’t speak to him any more than she has to. She doesn’t hug him. She doesn’t take his hand.

And whenever she can avoid it, she doesn’t even look him in the eye.

*

Returning to Asgard feels more strange than it is a relief. Of course the path was inevitable; she hardly expected she would stay at Cranewood forever. But for Asgard’s familiarity it does not seem entirely welcoming to her. Not anymore.

She sleeps in her bed and eats with her family and walks through the same rooms she’s known ever since she was too small to fully remember. She’s surrounded by her things and everywhere she goes are the same sights and sounds and smells that once every day pleased and reassured her.

And everything is quiet, too quiet, and tense. Life seems static, and frozen, with no real joy or willingness behind it. As if she’s only going through the motions out of habit. As if her whole life has been cast in glass, and now everyone’s just waiting for it to shatter.

When she thinks of home the Asgard in her memories is peaceful and easygoing. An idyllic place, where Skadi was free to do as she pleased, and ignore whatever she wanted about her surroundings.

This place isn’t that ‘home’ any longer. Things have changed.

Everywhere she goes, she knows she is being watched, and not so kindly. People whisper about her, snide, and wondering.

She is half-Jotun; an unknown quality. Out of all her siblings she was the first unmasked and the only one to show any Frost Giant powers, and somehow, that makes her the one they are the most concerned with. They are trying to take her measure. Trying to figure out what she will do, what this new knowledge of her heritage means.

Skadi can feel them looking hard, searching for the cracks, waiting for her to show them some glimpse of the monster.

Though this new scrutiny affects them all and they are not held in as high regard as they once were, her family behaves as though the months that passed gave them time to recover. They are happy and careless with one another, and Skadi pretends she feels the same. Pretends that her time away soothed over her feelings and she is back to being as she once was. As if she has forgotten to be angry.

But she has not. Oh no, she has not.

Her family presents a picture of unity. When they are still too young to choose for themselves, their mother had the conceit to dress them always in shades of green. Now older, Fandra often prefers pinks and purples, and Wyclef usually goes about in solid black. But Skadi has never until now rejected the ‘family colors’.

Now she refuses to be seen in them. She digs through her closet and tosses all greens and golds aside, leaving them in a wrinkled sad heap on the floor: rejected, cast off.

There’s no plan in it but she finds herself gravitating to blue. Icy shades or bright royal ones. Wyclef’s darkness blends in, Fandra’s dusky velvet compliments rather than jars, but Skadi’s attire visibly clashes with her family. It’s as if she holds herself apart from them, always standing one step back.

She will not speak to her father. She won’t sit next to him, she won’t stand near him, and if possible leaves whenever he enters a room.

When forced to she addresses him coldly. And she wills him to see all her contempt and disdain, whenever he looks into her eyes.

He makes no act to hide that such rejection makes him miserable. She takes no pains to hide that such misery leaves her unmoved.

He is too shamed by her anger to respond with anger in kind. He will not demand or beg her forgiveness, and she has sworn to herself he will never have it from her anyway. By now her hatred has turned inward, sour but seething, and formed itself into conviction.

She’s no way to vent her growing restlessness, her sense of wronged frustration. She has yet to return to the training grounds, uncertain what she might find there waiting for her. Aunt Sif she knows will not reject her, but the other recruits…

She hangs back rather than dare to find the answer. Sparring has always been her outlet, her place where she is happiest and freest and most herself. She is eaten up with the dread of that spoiled.

The rest of the family watches her from the corner of their eyes, silent and misgiving. Skadi feels sure she knows whose side all of _them_ are on. Well, she won’t hear it.

If she’s the only one who can see Father for the coward that he is, if she must stand alone, then so be it.

There is one single seeming outlet, though, and that is Skadi’s grandfather. He says nothing on the subject, less than the others, if possible. But his gaze lingers on her sometimes as his fingers tug at his beard, thoughtful. And she sees sympathy in the lines of his well-worn face.

Beloved Grandfather, who cheers on her accomplishments and hails them as solemnly as if she were a queen. Who was ever there with a lap for her to sit in, a tiny present snuck into her little hand, a fond twinkle in his eye. Who watches her fight and cry ‘ _for Asgard!’_ and smiles over her so proudly.

Of _course_ he would care for her feelings throughout this. Of _course_ he would understand.

One afternoon Skadi returns to her chamber to find someone has snuck a gift in for her. Unwrapped, two objects lay on the bed side by side.

The first is a battle mask, not unlike what she wore that fateful day, but this one has obviously been made for her. It fits the lines of her face perfectly and when strapped into place covers everything but her hair. Its shape is that of a wolf’s, beaten and molded with artisan’s skill from fine silver, the snout curving over the length of her chin, two ears atop almost like proud horns, a fierce and flawless visage through which she can peer with canny eyes.

The second is a weapon, a long staff that ends in a blade almost more like a knife than a spear’s, wicked and thick and curving to one side. Hand-carved with patterns and bone-white, it is no practice weapon. This is equipment for a true and full-fledged warrior.

Skadi is thrilled with the presents and delights over both of them. There is no note, but it was hardly necessary. Surely these must be from her grandfather. Knowing she longs to return to the training grounds he had them made and sent to bolster her. He wanted to encourage her warrior’s spirit and flagging sense of identity.

Heeding his wishes Skadi straps them on right away and heads out in search of practice, heart pounding in anticipation.

She finds some young acolytes gathered out at the training fields underneath watchful eyes of their instructors. The sun is bright, the winds still and low as staves and dulled blades lower silently. Leather armor creaks as heads turn to look at her.

As she closes the distance she waits for somebody to speak. But nobody does. Their faces are blank – and perhaps, she thinks, a bit nervous. Though too little to guess exactly nervous of _what_.

Skadi swears though, that they won’t see her be nervous in reply. _You will not see my doubt._ She swallows and forces a smile. Lifts her chin a bit as she holds head up high.

“I’ve come to spar. I’m sorely out of practice,” she announces, cool as one pleases. “Will anyone be my partner?”

There’s hesitance. Glances are exchanged. Skadi looks expectantly from one face to another.

One of the instructors finally clears his throat. He points. “You there,” he gestures gruffly, “and you. And you. You can take turns indulging the princess.”

She nods her thanks, as the first lad steps forward, ducking his gaze. Skadi takes up her position and slips into a stance, spear raised. Across at the other side of the well-worn stone circle the youth that’s to be her opponent mirrors her.

There’s no command to start but there doesn’t have to be. They are well versed in this.

There is a moment, just a moment, of stiff tension before it begins. Those few seconds of glorious anticipation just before a fight, full of potential and excitement: a young warrior’s favorite time.

In that space, the young man lifts his head and looks straight at Skadi. His eyes flash, his mouth curls in a sneer.

It’s not disgust but derision. Dismissiveness. _‘You will never belong here. Try, try as you might, you don’t fool us. You might be the best warrior but you will never be of Asgard.’_

Skadi’s face falls. Her heart thuds once, hard, inside her throat. Then she steels her gaze again and smoothly, with one hand, reaches to slip her mask down from where she was wearing it back over her hair, to fully cover her expression.

They will not see her doubt. They will not see anything. It’s not for them to see.

The bout begins. The youth makes the mistake of starting too slow, of underestimating her. He goes to knock Skadi back and she leaps out of the way easily, and then hits him hard before he can recover. The air whistles and rends in a sharp thwack as she strikes him once, twice, three times, each blow bruising and harder than necessary. The lad tumbles backward and lands on the ground outside the ring, wincing.

No one steps in quickly to take his place, as they give Skadi a look that’s now much more wary.

“Well go on then,” the instructor snaps, though there’s a tension in his voice. “Don’t keep her waiting.”

The two trade a look, the one closer starting to move as they seem to come to their decision. But Skadi doesn’t wait on him. Before he can slip into a ready posture she strikes, bringing the side of her spear against his chest, the length gripped apart between both her fists.

Her victim makes a noise of irate protest – she gives no quarter, but shifts her footwork and goes in for another attack. He barely blocks her, and then both he and the second trainee lunge for her at once, instead of waiting.

She looks back over her shoulder, spear lifted and braced for an overhead strike. They are circling her, one heading for her back while the other remains at her front. They mean to harry her by pinning her between them. A wise tactic.

But pride notwithstanding Skadi really is a much better fighter than most of the beginners. She sees the weaknesses in their forms, moves faster than they can prepare for. She slashes one in the leg; the other gets a spear butt across the forehead. Both reel back, injured, complaining.

She assaults them again. There’s a swift kick to a kneecap, an unflinching punch to a stomach. She swings her head forward, bashing a skull as temple meets with her mask. The first opponent she knocked down is now back on his feet and rushes to avenge himself by joining the others, and all three attempt at her at once. The fight is no longer a sparring match but a wild thing, a brawl.

Skadi gives into her instinct, her reflex, and moves without thinking. She is all vicious attack and untouchable defense. The blood is a steady encouraging chant in her ears as she pours her strength into every muscle, determined to show them her might.

The anger compressed inside pours out of her and guides her as she strikes. Those fighting her flail about desperately, trying to stop her, trying to escape her reach but she keeps on coming, unrelenting, driven on by the cold fire within her.

_Attack, attack, attack_ – she will not stop, not until they’ve all been knocked down. Until no one stands left who dares to face her. Until they’ve paid for dismissing her, for disrespecting her, until she’s shown them all. Until she destroys them all, rips every last one of them into pieces—

_“Enough!”_ a voice roars, and as Skadi is brought to reality, Sif stands between her and the others, a forearm braced against each side, violently shoving Skadi away.

Skadi stumbles back, reels, concentration shattered but keeps her footing. She is breathing heavily as her chest rises and falls, soaked in a cold sweat she doesn’t remember the beginnings of. Her heart still races as she lifts her mask to stare back at Sif wildly.

Sif’s mouth is a line, her lips pale, twisting as if with something bitter. But her eyes are hard and undeniable.

“Go,” she commands, voice loud and furious. “Leave and don’t come back. You’re barred from any practice here, until you can get yourself under control!”

Skadi stares in bewilderment. A sharp taste hits her; she lifts knuckle to her mouth and brings it away smeared red, and realizes her lower lip is bleeding. But none struck her – in the intensity of her battle fury she bit down without even feeling.

She gapes at Lady Sif, wanting to protest but nothing comes. This is a woman she was raised to call ‘Aunt’, one of the bravest warriors Asgard has ever known. And she’s looking at her like…

Skadi spins, stomach twisting, and hurries herself away.

Back in her room she wrenches the mask from around her neck and tosses it away with a clatter. The spear falls from her grasp to the floor. Her heart still pounds, hands shaking.

She’s always enjoyed a good fight, the act of battle making her feel alive, bringing a heat to her blood. But what has just happened – it’s never been like this before.

She would’ve killed her opponents if left unchecked, she knows she would have. She _wanted_ to.

She feels awash in shame for one full moment before it’s suddenly shoved aside. She remembers the reason why she is what she is, the reason why this is happening to her. The anger comes again, rapid and consuming. Her teeth bare as she lets loose a guttural howl.

Going to the mirror she looks at her pale skin, her sharp face, bright green eyes that stare out from beneath thick black tresses.

Casting about she snatches up a knife.

Seizing one fistful at a time she saws through her hair, chopping it off. Until nothing’s left but scraggly locks shorn close to her skull.

When she’s finished she stands in uncertainty, chest heaving. Taking a few dizzy steps she turns about, grasping at her temple, not knowing what to do next.

A voice says her name: “Skadi.”

She spins to face it and almost screams, thinking at first her father stands there in the door. But the face is too young, too thin. Her brother Wyclef raises a quizzing eyebrow at her, almost mockingly.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Who said you could come in here?” Skadi snaps back. “Get out of my room! _Get out of here!_ ” She lunges at him, shrieking, fists thrashing. “Get _away_ from me!”

Wyclef manages to brace himself and with a grunt shoves her back. As she goes flying she feels the dancing tickle of his magic reaching out to her – she hits her bed and lands back on her mattress, and when she lifts her head again her hair once more hangs long about her face, untouched.

“How dare you,” she gasps out, tugging at it, incensed he’d do anything to her without her permission. “Don’t use your powers on me!”

“How do you think Mom would’ve reacted, once she’d seen what you’d done?” he retorts. “What else would you do, I wonder – did you plan next to carve out your eyes, because they also look like Father’s?”

She scrambles to her feet, using her hands, huffing. “Don’t talk to me like you have any _idea_. Have you no sense of pride?”

“What, because I’m not cross with him too?” He scoffs, arms folded, leaning against her door with one foot raised. “You’re acting like a child. No – like a madwoman. And to think you lay claim to being the reasonable one.”

Skadi hurls a pillow, then a vase in his direction. “If you’re not going to say anything useful, then get out of my sight!”

Wyclef obeys her silently and goes, but not without giving her one last superior, disdainful look.

She stares after him in the wake of his departure, hopeless and numb and desperately angry. She doesn’t understand how he can do it. How he goes on like nothing’s changed about him, still as self-assured and irritatingly smug as ever. Like nothing has happened.

In the silence her brother leaves behind Skadi looks around at the contents of her room. She can’t envision herself standing here for a moment longer without destroying everything, tearing pictures off the walls and breaking items against the floor. So she also leaves.

She takes a long walk across the courtyard, skirting the main thoroughfare of the grounds in favor of the roughest most sun-soaked paths so that she meets with nobody. Eventually she reaches a small lake at an isolated corner of the gardens.

There are enough trees that the light over the lake appears overcast, and the water’s surface is a crystalline sort of gray and the atmosphere romantically misty. The air is cooler, but there are no winds today, and the water is smooth as glass.

Skadi remembers playing down here when she was a baby. Running in and out of the water’s edge with her brothers, giggling as they got their toes wet, thinking they were braver than they really were.

She remembers a spread picnic blanket and her father watching her with a smile. The weight of her mother’s hand against hers, voice a bright and encouraging whisper, as she taught her how to skip stones.

Leaning down Skadi scoops up a round flat pebble. She brings it level to her face, eyes it, and then curls her arm and tosses it carefully out with a flick of strength.

The stone skips seven times before it loses balance and lands with a plunk beneath the water.

She stares after it, hair drifting in her eyes, and realizes there’re tears running down her cheeks.

She never realized every last piece of who she is, every part of her identity, is encompassed by Asgard; and everything she thinks and feels about Asgard is marked by memories of her parents – so that the whole is hopelessly entwined together. Nothing can be pulled apart. She had a nice vacation while she was at Cranewood and could pretend to be somebody else, but now that she’s home again there’s no escaping the reminder.

She wants to belong to Asgard – but her concept of Asgard will, in part, always belong to her father.

It’s a truth undeniable and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

She knows if she lets herself stay this angry she will lose everything – her family, her home, the world as she knows it and her place in it. She’ll grow cold and become someone hostile, someone frightening.

But she doesn’t want to let go of her anger either. She _should_ be angry: she has every right to be. Why must she be the one to change, when she’s the wronged party? It isn’t fair.

There is a quiet sound of movement behind her and Skadi turns to see who is stalking her, frown upon her face and one hand tightened into a fist.

The All-Father watches her calmly, hands folded out of sight behind his back.

“Be at peace, granddaughter,” he instructs passively, as her expression instantly changes. She turns quickly to scrub at her face and hide the tell-tale marks. “My apologies for interrupting you.”

“No, no. It is all right, Grandfather.” She looks again. “I did not see you coming.”

He gazes at her sedately with one bright eye within his weathered face, beneath a crown of snowy white hair, framed softly by ornate robes of silver and gold. He never blinks or frowns but his attitude seems somehow somber. And Skadi feels certain that he somehow knows what happened this morning at the training grounds, maybe even the quarrel she just had with Wyclef. It’s a sense she’s had her entire life, that her grandfather always seems to _know_ about everything.

He places a hand out and Skadi puts her palm against his, unthinkingly. He gives her a comforting squeeze before releasing his grasp.

“You are unhappy, child,” he states. “For quite some time now, and growing worse by the day. It can come as no surprise to anyone.” He sighs. “But I am very sorry to see it. To watch the confusion in your soul, the raw agony within your heart.”

Head awhirl Skadi turns away slightly, eyes cast down, hands hanging limply at her sides.

“Your sympathy is kind, Grandfather, but there is no need you should be sorry,” she mutters, unable to see him past her eyelashes. “It’s not _your_ fault.”

He breathes in and gives a strange laugh, quiet and slow and privately, mirthlessly amused. “Oh, no?”

Skadi looks at him bemused but he does not explain. Instead he rests a hand gently against her shoulder. “Will you walk with me awhile?”

“Of course.” It’s always been her pleasure to spend time with her grandfather. Especially now – even with this odd air of meaningful quiet.

The pace he sets is relaxed and unhurried. She walks alongside him, occasionally lingering a step or two behind, regarding him with curiosity.

They have moved far enough that the lake is out of sight when he begins conversation anew. “The relationship, Skadi, between your father and I. How would you describe it?”

She flounders in answering at first, mouth opening and closing once, and not only because it’s an unexpected question. “Respectful,” she settles on.

“Ah, true enough.” Grandfather nods sagely.

She wonders if he’s thinking the same things she is – that Father is sometimes _overly_ polite in paying redress to his parent; that they don’t seem to spend any time alone together, that a distance lingers between them that at times seems cool. It’s nothing like the relationship Grandfather has with his other son, nor at all like relationship both sons have with their mother. It is something that Skadi has never understood, but like so much in her young life was willing to dismiss without thinking much over.

Now of course, that she revisits it, she cannot help but wonder.

Grandfather continues, “But do you think he loves me?”

Skadi is shocked. “You’re his _father_ ,” she blurts, unthinking. Even without clear proof it seems obvious that he should.

The All-Father stops walking. He waits to make certain she’s looking at him before he turns his head to focus on her with his singular gaze.

“Do you love your father, Skadi?” he asks her gently.

_Not anymore,_ is the response that kicks at once to the forefront of her mind, swift and rancorous like bile rising. But the words refuse to leave her. She tries to think them through and finds she can’t make any sense appear in them.

He is still her father; still the one that raised her, held her, kissed her, bore her. She hates him now but does that necessarily mean she’s stopped loving him?

She finds, actually thinking on it, that she does not.

“I,” Skadi falters. Her stomach hurts. Tears rolls anew down her cheeks. She feels so profoundly lost and unhappy. “I…I don’t know.”

Grandfather runs the flat of his hand across her hair, waiting patiently until she’s cried it out and managed to mostly recompose herself, comforting in his presence and silent strength.

“Did your parents ever tell you how they happened to meet?”

Skadi sniffs before catching her breath. “I know _a_ version of that story,” she says, implying she already knows there’s more than one.

Vagueness abounds in tales set in the years immediately prior to her parents’ courtship. Her mother and father, her aunts and uncles are all very careful what they mention as happening during this time. Uncle Thor being banished and sent to Earth, his first time meeting Aunt Jane, the adventures that followed…told enthusiastically, but with a certain lacking in detail.

She knows that this was considered a period of darkness. That her father had a quarrel with his brother, with everyone – and whatever it was, he bears its mark of shame still.

“I was told that Father made many mistakes,” she tells her grandfather softly, “and that because of them he took himself away from Asgard for a while.”

He nods. “Not untrue. But…”

He hesitates, a thoughtful expression that indicates he chooses his next words carefully.

Finally he speaks, “Forgive me, granddaughter, but I shall be blunt. Loki kept away from Asgard and none sought to retrieve him because he’d become a danger to it.” A tight breath is his only pause as he carries on, “He kept on doing dangerous things for quite some time: he was destructive, and hurt others through either intent or lack of caring, and often one of those he sought to harm was none other than his brother. Many times he lashed out at and even tried to kill Thor.”

Skadi takes this in dazedly – aghast, but not nearly as shocked as perhaps she could be. To hear such an extent of her father’s crimes is certainly surprising; but there’ve been plenty of hints prior to this that such a listing existed. It explains many things and fills in the unknown darkness of his past.

She’s already learned that her father is secretly of a whole other species. Can anything else kept from her really be that astounding?

“Why did he do it?” she asks with a grim sort of fascination.

“That I think it would best be left to your father to explain. There are many reasons, some of which I still may not entirely do credit to.” The factual swiftness leaves Grandfather’s tone. “But the tipping point, surely, came when he discovered what he really was.”

Skadi ceases in her walking and stares sluggishly down at her toes.

“He did not know.”

“No,” he agrees, “he did not. And that I’m afraid was my deed entirely. I kept the truth from him, until…until it was too late, and he had already found out on his own.”

She didn’t think about it. But now it makes sense. Father was not _raised_ thinking he was a Jotun. That knowledge came to him much later on.

She has been so angry, so very angry that he could do this to her, that he could tell her _such_ a lie – now it turns out he was lied to in exactly the same way himself? That he, out of everyone, might know something of what it is that Skadi is feeling?

She recalls with sudden vividness that _look_ on his face when she turned on him. The horror in his eyes.

Her voice is ragged. “And then years later, he turned around and let the same thing happen to me?”

“We try so hard to prevent our children from making the same mistakes we have, Skadi. Sometimes those very actions push such events into happening. It is a strange pattern of fate that only becomes clear when you’re no longer standing inside it.” Letting his cryptic words to her hang he continues forward and she has awareness enough to follow.  “But learning the truth of his origins as he did caused your father a great deal of pain. It filled him with rage that for a while consumed him entirely. He was spitefully jealous of Thor for having the birthright he felt he’d been denied, and he despised me entirely for the wrong I’d done to him.”

The All-Father stops at last in his purposeful path, and Skadi looks around to realize with a start they’ve somehow made it back to the palace and directly outside the entrance to his chambers.

Her grandfather speaks solemnly as he adds, “Eventually Loki returned to his brother. I cannot say that he has ever really returned to _me._ ”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. It sounds awful, almost pitiable to hear him describe. But she can’t say as much without bringing herself into hypocrisy.

Heedless of her plight, he gestures. “Come. There is something I want to show you.”

She has, she realizes, never been inside her grandfather’s rooms before. But she cannot deny him the request. When the door opens she trails in his footsteps, shoulders hunched anxiously, head respectfully bowed.

The interior is richly decorated in regal opulence, appropriate for a former king. The space is vast, divided by many hanging sheer curtains – much bigger than her own room, though not as big she knows as the king’s chamber that belongs to her uncle.

“Wait here,” Grandfather beckons, and he disappears out of sight.

Skadi is left standing near the center, head turning as she takes in the stories told by the runes painted high on the ceiling, the many trophies claimed from wars older than the generation before hers. The furniture is stately but minimal, and everything is almost intimidatingly tidy.

There’s an air of unreality over everything. It’s hard to imagine Grandfather actually sitting at his desk or standing before his wardrobe, or sleeping in his bed.

She knows he’s gone from the formidable ruler he was when her parents first knew him. Gracefully retired to being a smiling old man who spends afternoons hugging his grandchildren and spoiling them with treats. She will never find him _frightening_. But there’s nothing to disguise his ancientness, his power even now. He’s a presence that’s larger than life, that even his beloved granddaughter must attend to with proper reverence.

The All-Father steps back into the space, brushing aside a hanging of thick tan colored fabric, and Skadi turns to face him.

Between both his outstretched hands he holds Gungnir, his legendary spear.

As he walks closer Skadi can’t take her eyes away from the weapon, breath caught in her throat. The golden length of its shaft fairly gleams with history, with power – its blade is sharp, its staff is sturdy, and magic lurks promisingly beneath every inch of its surface.

“This has been my companion for many years. It is a tool well-made, seeking only a fitting bearer to its legacy.” He casts his eye along the object that he holds. “I had intended once to leave it to your father. Alas, I think, given the events of history, he would not now accept it,” he remarks sadly. “So I’ve decided that instead it should pass to you.”

“…Me?” Skadi gazes up at him, abashed and amazed.

Gungnir is a weapon of legend equaled perhaps only by Mjolnir itself. It represents everything the All-Father ever accomplished. It is a symbol of Asgard’s glory. Inheriting it is no small honor.

The part of Skadi raised to adhere to tradition wants to protest. If not to one of his sons then surely the All-Father should leave it to his eldest’s yet unborn heir, a future king. But instead he gives it to the granddaughter of his second child?

But Skadi is speechless. Instead of voicing her thoughts she merely stands there, hands upheld, as her grandfather neatly places Gungnir down within her palms.

Her fingers wrap firmly yet gingerly around the long hilt, timidity testing the feel of its weight with great respect and care.

“One day, when I am gone, this will be yours.”

All words are stilled with the significance she feels within this moment. In one gesture he professes his love, confirms his favoritism, and proclaims her warrior.

Her eyes lift slowly to her grandfather’s face as she hands Gungnir back to him. He takes it without hesitance.

“Remember that,” he offers her, mildly. “And, remember also…that what you think begins between you and your father, is only the most recent part of a story that stretches back far further.”

“He still lied to me,” Skadi whispers, unable to put the vehemence into it she might have earlier. “He still did wrong by making a mockery of my entire life.”

“I never said you had to forgive him, Skadi,” Grandfather corrects her. “I only said that you should remember the circumstances. Think on it.”

With dim uncertainty she nods.

Grandfather looks satisfied. An absent smile graces his expression as with one arm he tugs her into an embrace, pressing a kiss to her temple. She hugs him back at the shoulders, squeezing her eyes shut as her face brushes his thick whiskers.

“Now, pardon me for hurrying you, but I must ask you to leave,” he requests, polite but certain. “I have another appointment.”

Skadi is but barely aware of one foot going in front of the other as she makes her way to the door. She feels both heavier and lighter, the weight of a million thoughts the only thing keeping her down as her head threatens to float away in confusion.

At the threshold however a thought strikes her. She turns back.

“Grandfather, did you give me anything else recently? Any other presents?”

He looks at her in puzzlement. “No,” is his simple, frank answer. “Why?”

Skadi laughs weakly, and only says in reply, “No reason.”

She is such a fool. The mask and the staff weren’t from who she thought at all. And they didn’t mean what she thought at first either.

But _of course_ the items were left for her by her father. Who _else?_

She bows in farewell to her grandfather. After taking her leave she doesn’t go back down the hallway into the rest of the palace on the way to her room.

Instead she goes the other way, the long way, twisting around back outside so that she walks through the grounds directly beneath the All-Father’s balcony. She has much to think about, and she doesn’t want to be cloistered within the palace. She needs some air.

It’s grown much darker now, dusk having settled in. There are torches outside to provide illumination, though she knows from experience she will seem little more than a glimmer in the dark.

It’s not her intention to sneak around hidden but it turns out to be to her favor when she passes back by the exterior of the rooms she was just in and happens to look up.

Two figures are in her grandfather’s room, standing close in conversation near the windows. The night air across the balcony blows the curtains aside, offering for a brief time an almost perfect view. The All-Father’s form is easily recognized. The second is slimmer and taller than him, green and gold-trimmed robes, dark hair-

_Father._

Skadi’s breath stills. Though no one looks her way she halts in her path, and ducks partway behind a tree. Fingers pressed against the trunk she peers up, watching intently.

Father and Grandfather face one another, from the look of things the first talking rapidly, the second standing there mostly silent. From their expressions and gestures their conversation is intense, emotional, and very, very personal.

Grandfather appears sorrowful, weary. Father…his words come at times unsteadily, his hands shaking, his face pained. He acts as a supplicant, his manner beseeching.

His daughter has never seen this before. He looks _anguished_.

A few fading snippets from their voices drift down, barely discernible to Skadi’s ears:

_“…sorry, so sorry…I never knew…”_

_“…hush now…it’s alright, my son…”_

There’s not been much incentive lately to respect her father’s privacy. But in light of the things she’s been told earlier, Skadi realizes this is not a moment to be witnessed by anyone.

She peels herself off from the tree and heads speedily away.

*

For the next few days Skadi is quiet, and keeps mostly to herself.

She lies on her bed or sits by the window, and thinks about everything that she’s done. She thinks about her past, about Mom and her grandparents and her siblings. She thinks about her childhood on Asgard. She thinks about what she learned during her time at Cranewood. She thinks about everything she’s ever seen or heard, and then she thinks about the things of the past that her grandfather told her.

Her father raised her to believe a lie. He taught her to practice values he couldn’t uphold himself. He is _not_ the man she thought he was for the past fourteen years of her life.

He’s more complicated than that. But, she’s coming to find he’s more complicated than who she believed he was after finding out the truth, also.

His betrayal changes a lot of things. At first she thought it changed _everything_ – that it negated everything too.

But she’s starting to feel that might not be true.

Time goes by. Skadi still avoids her father’s gaze. She has no idea what Grandfather told him about their conversation, if anything. She has no idea what he knows.

But surely he must sense something.

One day Skadi receives a note in his handwriting. There’s no greeting, no floweriness, no entreaties. Only a simple request: she is to come alone to the vault where Asgard stores its most powerful weapons at a certain time.

She wonders what would happen if she ignores the note, if she didn’t come. But she never considers not going.

With the strangest anticipation hanging over her, pulse thrumming as if she heads off to battle, she makes her way down to the darkened bowels of the palace. The guards outside the vault don’t give her a second look – inside the room is dim and cold, lit only by torches and the few items that glow.

Father sits on the floor at the very end of the single long passage that makes up the room. He’s hunched slightly, legs apart in front of him and folded, forearms resting on his knees. His clothes are, for him, simple: he looks as though he didn’t sleep well and then dressed in a hurry.

He spies her arrival and rises, carefully. “Skadi. Thank you for coming to me.” There is a tremor in his voice, an awareness and fear that she could’ve refused.

Skadi stops when she’s four feet in front of him – closer than for a while she has allowed him to get. “You wanted to see me?” she asks calmly, toneless.

Father nods once, swallowing lightly. He turns and looks back at the wall behind him, over his shoulder. At the great black sword that hangs there, crossed over and over by heavy chains.

“One day I will tell you the story of where that came from. Of the first battle your mother and I ever fought.” He looks back to her. “But today, my child, if you will stand to listen, I’ll tell you a different story instead. Of the object that stood in this same space when _I_ was young, and how it forever changed me.”

“Go on,” Skadi says in a quiet voice, her throat tight, her mouth dry.

Her father takes a step to the side, shuffling almost. Averting his gaze from her and fixing instead on an empty space in the air before him he raises both his hands. Fingers spread he frames them, as if making the shape of a box.

And then as Skadi watches there is a blue glow – he waves his hands and suddenly there _is_ an object where there was nothing before. A rectangle, almost, accompanied by a hiss and rush of frigid air. There are markings that can’t be Asgardian. It’s nothing Skadi recognizes.

With utmost care Father slowly pulls his hands away. The object he summoned remains where it is, hovering, supported by his magic.

Skadi takes a step closer, just one, to take a better look at it. She can _feel_ power – something that sets her nerves on edge. And the air in the vault seems to have grown perceptibly colder.

“This,” her father says, voice suppressed, unsteady but determined, “is called the Casket of Ancient Winters. It was seized in the last great war fought by the All-Father. It was taken, in the last days of battle with the Frost Giants, from Jotunheim.”

Her eyes jump sharply to his face. He seems paler and sickly behind the faint light put out by the Casket.

“This is a Frost Giant weapon?” she asks.

“Yes, and more. It’s a construct of ancient power and can be used to do many things. Once, it was considered the very heart of their world itself.” He lifts a hand again, stopping with fingers curled just above it. His hand, she realizes, is shaking. “Though all I’ve ever learned to do with it is summon bursts of cold.”

“You said it used to be kept here.” Skadi frowns. “That it was once where the Kinslayer’s blade is.”

Father nods. “When I was a boy, my father used to bring me and my brother down here,” he recollects aloud. “He’d stand us in front of it and tell us tales of the villainous Frost Giants, and how one day when we were older it would be our turn to do battle with such monsters.”

Skadi stares up at him, her heart in her throat. She can only wait for him to go on.

Father’s mouth twitches. He finally meets her eyes. “And then when I _was_ older, I found out the truth. At the worst possible time. In the worst possible way.”

He drops his hand and weaves around the Casket, closing the distance between them, halving it. Skadi leans back, tensed, but doesn’t step away.

“I wasn’t a child, as you still are, Skadi. I was a young man. I thought there was nothing about myself left to learn. And I didn’t just find out that someone in my family was not what I’d expected: I learned that I had no family. That my parents were not my parents at all. _I_ was a monster. I was _nothing_.”

His eyes are wide, and full of sadness, and pleading.

“I don’t ask that you stop hating me. I alone out of all others can understand exactly why you should want to. But please understand me: I wasn’t raised as you and your brothers and sister have been. I was not surrounded by acceptance and daily showings of love. I already felt alone, and different, and I had been raised to think of the Jotun as brutish repulsive creatures, and then I found out _I was one_.” His voice breaks, halting, and then he goes on, looking sideways. “Can you even _begin_ to imagine?”

Skadi swallows thickly. “Probably exactly like what happened to me and what I felt. Only, worse,” she allows. “Like a hundred times worse.”

Father gives a quaking laugh as he nods again. “Most likely.” He gestures as if he’d like to reach for her, but doesn’t dare to.

“So you see to me being a Jotun will always be marked by horror. I thought having to grow up _knowing_ , the way that I knew, would cause my children unspeakable pain. I only wanted to spare you that pain.” He shuts his eyes. “I was so focused avoiding it, I didn’t think to what might happen should the cycle be repeated.”

“You should have,” is the only reproach Skadi can think to give him, childish and heated but there all the same.

“I know. I should have. And I…I am so, so sorry daughter,” he breathes. “I never wanted to hurt you. It breaks my heart, to think you have suffered as I once suffered. That in my selfishness, and my _arrogance_ ,” his teeth show, rough with self-loathing, “I almost caused you to lose your way.”

He steps back again, and she realizes he’s heading closer to the Casket, even though he never takes his eyes off her.

“But you see, I could never accept it. Telling you and the others would mean having to face what I was myself,” Father explains fatalistically. “And I couldn’t. I was too weak. Even now I…” Yet another shake of his head. “I wanted to give you everything. Instead the only thing I passed on to you is the curse of having my blood.”

“What are you doing?” she questions, suddenly afraid.

He looks away from her and at the Casket, face empty as if he stares down off of a cliff.

“This is what I saw, all those years ago, the first time I felt the icy clasp of winter. This is what I became: what I realized no matter what I could never, never fight.”

He touches the side of the Casket. At once his fingers start to change. First grey, then blue, the texture of his skin rippling as it grows thicker and weird, rough markings rise. The coldness is spreading from the Casket to his body. And with it the change continues onward, upward, until everything she can see of his skin is blue and different.

Skadi breathes in slowly, softly. Father turns to her and his eyes are red. His gaze is mournful, and when he speaks his voice is the same.

“This is what I really am.” He looks down at his free hand even as the other remains on the Casket. “What I hate. What will always be my ‘true form’. So much happier am I to hide and to lie.” He lifts his chin and meets her eyes again.

“But here it is. You deserved the truth. So I give you all of it.”

Skadi doesn’t know what to say. Yes, it is frightening to see him this way, if only for how he’s both the same and yet at once so different. And she can tell how much his own body sickens him – what it means, to one raised as he was. But she has never seen a Frost Giant before.

And frankly, she thought they’d be uglier.

Her gaze drifts to the Casket itself. The cold reaches out to her, she almost feels it calling. Like it knows what she is. Like it knows that Jotunheim is part of her legacy.

She hesitates for a moment and then Skadi lifts her own hand, reaching for it.

She feels her father watching her, hears him breathe in with alarm. But he doesn’t try to stop her. And she has to know for herself.

There’s a tingle under her skin. The Casket seems to shudder against her hand; she feels its cold seeping into her body, pulling at her, trying to bring her over to its side. There’s an odd feeling in her head, like some ancient voice is whispering to her, and she can’t decide whether this is sinister or merely strange.

But nothing happens to her hand. She stares down at it, watching, and her skin remains white, not blue.

She looks to her father, questioning, and finds he too watches, face expressionless. He catches her eyes and shakes his head, not having an answer himself.

Skadi takes her hand away from the Casket. Father mirrors her. She hesitates briefly again before going to seize his hand with her own – he sees what she’s doing and lifts both hands up, palm-forward.

She meets his with hers positioned a similar way, palm to palm, her slightly shorter fingers spreading to match his best she can.

They stand there, silently, hands pressed against each other’s.

She can see Father’s skin gradually warming again without the contact of the Casket, his complexion paling and pinking. But nothing is happening to her.

He smiles, faintly. “Well after all, you are half-mortal,” he offers. “It seems to have done the trick necessary to save your appearance. Another reason for me to love your mother.” But he reminds her, “Any who was not Jotun-born would not be able to survive such cold.”

“I know.” Skadi drops her hands and steps back. “And if you weren’t Jotun, you wouldn’t have been able to give birth to me, right? And, you probably wouldn’t have met Mom, either.”

He stares at her, taken aback, not seeming to know what to say. “Skadi…”

She stops him with a shake of her head. She draws a breath. “I would not exist, if you hadn’t been a Frost Giant,” she concludes. “And so I think…it cannot be such a bad thing.”

He’s changed completely back now. The last bit of red leaves his eyes as they go back to that familiar green. The same green eyes that all her brothers have. The same green eyes Skadi sees every time she looks in the mirror.

She can never doubt where she comes from, can she? How fortunate she. She’ll always know exactly who she is.

“You shouldn’t have lied to me,” Skadi tells her father, “but you don’t have to apologize for what you were born as.”

Father bites his lower lip, eyebrows knitting together as he gazes at her. He doesn’t seem to trust what he’s hearing her say is correct.

One of them, she thinks, is probably going to cry. Skadi manages a smile and raises her arms to hug her father, turning her head to the side as she closes the distance between them. Father makes a weak, stifled sound as he embraces her, pressing her to his body tight.

Her father, Skadi at last understands, is not the man she thought he was.

But he is still her _father_.

He will always be a part of her. It’s useless for her to be angry about that. There’s no point in her trying to fight it.

And, Skadi knows as Father squeezes her in his arms and curls his fingers in her hair, the warmth of his body familiar, his chin tucked down just against the top of her head, she wouldn’t want to fight that, anyway.

*

It is no surprise to anyone that Skadi will grow to be a warrior. One the greatest that Asgard has ever known.

She will roam far and have a great many adventures. She will fight and slay multitudes of enemies. She will see a great many things. She will live a long number of years.

She’ll meet a vast host of people, some of whom will like her, some who will not. Among them she’ll find true companions, warrior comrades, lifelong friends, and even a love or two.

But no matter what she will always return to Asgard. For Asgard is her home. And she does her realm proud by her exploits, which become known far and wide.

They sing and speak and whisper of Skadi in her silver armor trimmed with blue, mounted on a black steed with spear in her hands, silver mask over her face and wind streaming through her long dark hair. Skadi whose eyes gleam brightest in battle. Skadi who is fearless, and laughs for joy while fighting. Skadi who calls Winter to her fingertips. Skadi who is master of the blade. Skadi who is beautiful to behold, but has the most wicked grin.

And when they tell of her she is called by many names. They speak of them, some with awe, some with condescension. But always with respect, no matter how begrudging.

Skadi the Wolf, some murmur. Or Skadi Giant’s Blood, some others sneer. Skadi Longknife. Skadi Winter’s Breath. Skadi Odin’s Gem. And, most commonly: Skadi the Unyielding.

But above all else, her first and truest name is irreplaceable, for it is what she will always be.

For she will always be…Skadi Lokischild.


End file.
